Thoughts, musings and commentary in the midst of the daily trials and tribulations of a contract programmer.These comments/views are my own, and in no way should be construed as those of my clients/Employers.They are responsible for their opinions, I'm solely responsible for mine.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Things do change it seems. . .

Micah did come by on Father’s Day, and took me to a late lunch, early dinner. We had a really nice time, talking like we used to, about any and everything, from how work is going for each of us to cars, trucks and bikes… relationships and so on…

He and I always had a sort of easy communications style. Nothing was ‘out of bounds’ and we’d often talk for hours at a time. Yesterday served to remind me of those days, and how sad I was when he let me down.

I have this one ‘thing’ that’s really important to me and I’d stressed it to him many, many times… and that’s “Don’t make promises to me, that you can’t keep”

I don’t know when, or why really, that it started being so important to me, but it really is the one thing that will light my fuse like nothing else.

When he took off, and in the process neglected to make good on several promises to me, I worked up a righteous ‘ticked-off’… and then set about attempting to convince myself that I was angry, not hurt.

I mentioned in the last post, that despite what I’d tried to tell myself, in the end, I was just flat hurt.

We talked some about that as well… I let him know why I’d gotten so upset, and that, in retrospect; once again, I saw some of ‘me’ in his actions. Not something that was easy to talk about (for me) or to listen to (for him), but just like old times we managed to get through it… and came out the other side better for it. (or at least I think so)

One thing that came out was that he really does want to get square with me (us, his Mom and I) financially, and in the process also get back involved helping me with the truck project. I’d love to have his help, as I love teaching him things and we always have fun thrashing on things.

So, all in all… definitely the second best Father’s day ever, that first time he ever called me ‘Pop’ will be pretty hard to displace I think!

Work, has been a flurry of activity… I was asked to look into an ASP application that had been functioning fine for about a year, and suddenly this month was refusing to calculate the financial results for the period.

Once again, I’m tweaking and application that’s officially ‘not supported’, but serves a crucial purpose and causes a number of things to grind to a halt if it doesn’t function. The difference is, this time; the person who called on my expertise is one of the financial gurus in the company.

One of the things that struck me as I worked on this application was *why* we’d jumped on ASP.Net when it was released. In ASP, you had no ‘debug’ mode, it was a ‘through back’ to the days before integrated development environments and a total pain to work with. If there was one thing that launched Java, and JSP it was how poorly ASP was implemented in the first go around.

Even with all of that said, not only did I find, and fix the problem, in less time than it would have taken for them to find an ASP consultant, but I also fixed two other ‘core’ problems in that same section of code.

I love wins like that!!

The down side is that I have at least three other deliverables for Tuesday, and one of them I haven’t started on! I’ve got two PC’s though, and I can let one of them run the two processes I’ve got queued up, while I use the other to work up the third one… with any luck at all I’ll knock it all out!

Maryan continues to improve, slowly, but visibly everyday. She’s a bit frustrated that it’s taking time for her to ‘heal up’, but from what the Doc told me, she’s right on schedule, if not a little ahead of schedule.

It’s tough to see her still in pain, but encouraging to me that I can see her moving better than she has in over a year, and starting to sleep through the night without the pain waking her up… I may be crazy, but I’m holding out hope we’ll get at least one bike ride in together this year.

Tomorrow, I’m going to post some pictures of the IROC. It used to be mine, when I bought the Passat for work commuting I sold I to Micah. Shortly after he’d got it, he had an accident that crumpled up the front end.

Over one weekend we stripped off the front clip, cut out the damaged frame sections, welded in new ones, rebuilt the battery box, reassembled and aligned all the sheet metal and he was back on the road… I hope y’all enjoy the pics.

8 comments:

I have been through a situation like that with my own son. We were pretty much on the outs for about a 2 year period. It hurt like crazy, and there was not a darned thing I could do about it. He had to come around in his own time and realize that what he thought he was seeing in me was not for real.

It took a LONG time and a LOT of patience on my part - - of which I am pitifully in short supply! - - but it has finally happened.

The day he told me once again that he loved me was just about the best day of my life!

Liz - Thanks.. it has been a rough road... but I had to keep reminding myself I was a lot like that myself at his age. I just hope he's sincere.

Karyn - I'm seriously trying to figure out a way to steal your pool!!

Thanks, it was a great day, I'm a lucky guy.

Lorna - heh-heh... thank god indeed!!

Beth I hope we get to spend a lot of time together. I'd hope we could get back on solid footing again and just enjoy each others company! (besides, I like his current girlfriend, she's a sweetheart!)

Firehawk thanks bro... ya know... I just take the chance, I don't worry too much about the down side.. I've had my heart broken.. it's not fatal... I'd never forgive myself though if I passed on this and it would have worked out.

About Me

There's not that much to say about me... pretty simple man and I live by the simple motto

"Don't make promises you can't keep"

Harder to do than it sounds, or at least that's what I've found.

Besides my family, motorcycling is my second passion, followed closely by software development and my love of custom, high performance vehicles!!

I think that's one of the reasons I enjoy developing software, it's a little like building a hot-rod... It's all the little tricks and tweaks that make the end result so satisfying... but you'll never see a reality show on it!!